That isn't using Zeitgeist, at least not that I know of (it's not installed here). The list of Recent Files is created from your file ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel. Are you perhaps using something like Ubuntu Tweak or Bleachbit to clear this file?

Haha, I know, but Zeitgeist was already on my system before I installed "activity journal". I just installed it to see what is in the sqlite databases.

It's a little strange, beside in the "activity journal" I do not encounter my activities anywhere in the user interface. So perhaps I will remove Zeitgeist + activity journal to see what happens. Perhaps there is some other dependency which I do not hope. (I do not have any other DE's installed).

I think using the recently-used.xbel file is the best option within the mintmenu but I would like to boost the number of "recently used files".

I will suggest it on Github or figure it out myself if nobody is on my side...

will let you display more files. You will likely have to restart Cinnamon for it to take effect. To do so, press Alt+F2 to show the run dialog, type r (single letter r) and press enter to restart.

Edit: yes you can remove activity journal and zeitgeist. Only the package libzeitgeist-1.0-1 is needed, as some programs depend on that library (it's a library for reading data from the zeitgeist database, so it doesn't do anything without zeitgeist).

If you move/delete one of "recent files", they will still show up in the menu but, of course, clikcing on them does not work anymore. So by making the list only 20 items long one often prevents strange behaviour. Not really ideal, is it?

Perhaps I will write a little script and run it as a cronjob to check if the files are still in place and otherwise will remove the appropriate entries from

~./local/share/recently-used.xbel

(or change the location to the new one, if possible).

This script can also delete entries older than x days.

I will then set

const MAX_RECENT_FILES = 20;

to a very large value and my make sure the mintmenu behaves nicely.

Of course I would hope this would be the default behaviour of the mintmenu, but a nice workaround can be such an easy solution.

It's probably not to hard to rewrite that to a while loop, with using two counters instead of one. Currently it uses the 'id' counter, starting at 0 and counting up to MAX_RECENT_FILES, or to this.RecentManager._infosByTimestamp.length, whichever is smaller. (this.RecentManager._infosByTimestamp has the list of recently used items, sorted by timestamp.) So if instead you add also a counter for 'items' or something, and keep increasing that if you add a recently used file that still exists... I don't know how to check if the file exists, but the rest of the code would look like this. Just needs the if statement done

@xenopeek, thanks again. Yes, of course it is a good idea to change the mintmenu code directly. But I think I will just suggest it to Clem and the others and see if they like it.

In the meantime I fixed the problem with a little Perl script. I just finished it, so it is not really well-tested. But I think it works nicely. Running the script will remove all non-existent files from the recently-used files and also files that have not been accessed for more than 30 days.

If one combines this script (as a cronjob) with an increase of "const MAX_RECENT_FILES = 20;" to a large number (e.g. 200000) the mintmenu will find your recently-used files quite nicely.

attached you will find my little script to automatically remove nonexistent files from the recently used files menu. Using this script (as a cronjob) in conjunction with an increase of the number of items on the recently used files list (thanks xenopeek for pointing this out) will greatly improve the user experience when searching for recently used files in the mintmenu.

A detailed description can be found in the header of the script itself.

If you have any questions about the script, or you find a bug, please let me know in this thread.

Hopefully the script will be useful to some of you Mint-lovers.

Have fun and take care

PS: I will also suggest to the Mint developers to further improve the search capabilities in the mintmenu. Personally I think it would be a great idea if my own files would be automatically indexed (e.g. with tracker) and that those results are shown with the search results in the menu.

here is an updated version of the script to keep your recently used files complete and clean.

In this version I fixed a little annoyance with a work-around.

The problem is that editing the file "recently-used.xbel" will interrupt the smooth playing of a video in vlc or totem (and other video players) for a short period of time. The audio component will continue nicely but the video will come to a halt for a moment. (You can check this strange behaviour. Just play a video in vlc and open a text file. The video will be interrupted for a brief period of time.) As the script is run by cron at a several minute interval this can be annoying.

If you run the script with the flag "-v" it first checks whether vlc or totem uses more than 10% CPU in the "top" output. This is used as an indicator that a video is playing. If so, the script exits immeadiately without editing the recently-used.xbel file. In this way the playing of the video is not interrupted.

In addition the "recently-used.xbel" file is only written to if the contents have actually changed. By doing this the problem with the pausing videos is effectively prevented.

Of course, it would be nicer if vlc, totem would not interrupt the playing when the recently-used.xbel file is edited, but for the purpose of this script the chosen work-around is quite adequate.